High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Eating your own dog food, also called dogfooding, is when a company (usually, a software company) uses the products that it makes. In 1988, Microsoft manager Paul Maritz sent Brian Valentine, test manager for Microsoft LAN Manager, an email titled "Eating our own Dogfood", challenging him to increase internal usage of the company`s product. From there, the usage of the term spread through the company. Dogfooding can be a way for a company to demonstrate confidence in its own products, and hence a kind of testimonial advertising. For example, Microsoft and Google emphasize the internal use of their own software products. The idea behind "eating your own dog food" is that if you expect customers to buy your products, you should also be willing to use them.InfoWorld commented that this needs to be transparent and honest: "watered-down examples, such as auto dealers` policy of making salespeople drive the brands they sell, or Coca-Cola allowing no Pepsi products in corporate offices ... are irrelevant." The risks of public failure when using a company`s own products may explain the limited amount of public dogfooding. A perceived advantage beyond marketing is that it should allow employees to test the products in real, complex scenarios, and it gives management pre-launch a sense of progress as the product is being used in practice.